By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327)
Two things give true definitions of a man – his utterances and his actions. The two can be appropriately captured when the person in question is nobody and when he considers himself somebody. It is against these backgrounds that the true image of our public officials can be understood. Celebrated writer, William Shakespeare puts it that lowliness is the young ambition’s ladder but when he gets at the apex, he turns his back on the base from which he commenced his accent. At that point, arrogance creeps in and reality gives way for fantasy. Inimitable Chinua Achebe situates it in the allegory of the overfed Eneke (a species of bird), which in a moment of delusion, dared its god to a wrestling duel. This is the picture of the Nigerian public official. For them, it is a sign of arrival to the scene.
Minister of Works, Babatunde Raji Fashola, his counterpart in Agriculture and Rural Development, Muhammad Sabo Nanono and the Comptroller General of Customs, Hamid Alli, fit squarely into this odious class. Their outings and comments in recent time, suggest that they live in the moon or have completely lost touch with the realities in the land. Take a look at Fashola, for instance, who after the Wednesday, November 6, Federal Executive Council (FEC) Meeting, told journalists that the roads in the country are not as bad as they are often portrayed. The former Lagos State governor, did not provide evidence of good roads in the country, to buttress his points. Incidentally, while he made his rootless claim, it did not occur to him that the Biu – Gombe Road in the North East that used to take one-and-a-half hours, now takes four hours. It did not bother him that Damaturu-Biu Road in the same axis that currently takes four hours, used to be covered in less than two hours in the past. As the situation would have it, that was the road where military trucks and equipment were seized and taken into the bush by bandits some weeks back. Fashola did not reckon with the fact that the expansion work on the Lagos – Badagry Expressway which was initiated during his time in office, is currently a death trap, to put it mildly. The Okene – Abaji –Abuja and Abuja – Kaduna Roads which criminals have cashed in on the failed portions to unleash mayhem on travels, do not exist in his estimation. Of course, to him, the entire Federal Highways in the South East that are presently in derelict forms, do not matter. Curiously, he has made his outing and has had had his way.
Fashola built his horrendous homily on an earlier one by the Agriculture Minister, Sabo Nanono who said Nigeria is producing enough to feed itself, contrary to the narrative in some quarters that there is hunger in the land. Between Fashola and Nanono, it is this difficult to determine who is more thoughtless.
These are Nanono’s words; “I think we are producing enough now to feed ourselves and I think there is no hunger but if you say inconveniences I would agree. When people talk about hunger I laugh because they do not know hunger. If you go to other countries you will see what hunger is”.
Nanono comes from a section of the country where hunger and poverty literally walk on both legs. Streets in major cities in the North are daily littered with beggars who depend on alms for survival. At home, the poor knock on doors in search of left-over food items. But to the minister, there is no hunger in the country.
Add the comments by the Ministers to the Customs C-G, parading a scene of containers of Rice allegedly seized by the Service some years ago as justification for the closure of Nigeria’s borders, you get a picture of where Nigeria is headed for. The story of the Rice scene as told by Alli and his men, was that the containers had expired Rice concealed in them but were intercepted by vigilant Customs personnel. The claim earned them applauds from unsuspecting Nigerians. An investigation by a Lagos Newspaper,THISDAY, however put a lie to the claim, indicating that the celebrated feat was rather a scene of a seizure that took place some time ago. Alli and his men in packaging the tale, intended to create the impression that the border closure policy recently ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari, is yielding fruits. The President said that the measure was to protect local Rice farmers. Ever since, all his appointees, including the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, have been singing the same song.
This is not minding the high cost in goods and services the border closure has occasioned. They also do not put to consideration the cost of the measure on small scale businesses in Nigeria that export their finished products to neighbouring countries and depend on raw materials from there. The duties paid at various points at the borders have been lost ever since and many Nigerians put out of work. For the Ministers and the entire officials of the administration, everybody must be seen to be in sync with the thinking of the President.
This is the problem of imperial presidency which gives birth to sycophancy. In it, everyone must be seen as working or being busy – a form of motion without movement. In such situation, any person that has a contrary view, is accused of disloyalty or seen as an enemy of the state. This is why Fashola would ignore even the terrible road network in Lagos that he left as governor, barely five years to claim that the Nigeria roads are not as bad as being portrayed. Sadly, it is the chorus that excites President Buhari.
